Does social isolation cause “anti-social behaviour”?
Nelson Mandela has been in complete social isolation for decades and not become anti-social. I think it’s a flimsy excuse. Social behaviour is a value you either get or don’t get from home and parents. When you don’t learn it at home you still can work out your own social skills as a reflecting adult. Only if you are socially really degenerated anti-social behaviour will manifest. I live in a big residential complex, too. Not a housing estate thankfully but an upmarket yuppie residential complex and we don’t know our neighbours neither, but this does not make any of the tenants anti-social.
In a soft science like sociology, one cannot put definite templates on how certain behaviours are affected by social isolation. In the case of urban housing, one has to remember that some people tend to be more private than others (like me!). In communities with larger spaces, there might be more social interaction. Yet the possibility of anti-social behaviour occuring from both types of communities exists. However in urban societies, much has been said about juvenile deliquency, gang-related violence, bullying and other anit-social activities. Far from concluding that social isolation in urban communities cause anti-social behaviour, risk factors like the economic disposition, ethnic backgrounds, family upbringing and of course, personal choice should be considered. This is true also of other types of communities. Anti-social behaviour grows when there is lack of civic model both from communities and the government.
